Well, no, Katie-chan, things might not go quite as you expect. Don't lock 'em up, though. I'll need them to amuse myself in vacation. (Away from you alllll. ;o;) I think you'll like the ending though :3

Disclaimer—*closes eyes and wishes hard* *opens them again* … nope.

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undercover

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Prompt:—

and the pool was filled with water out of sunlight

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(a story is always a lie.)

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"Live with you?" Aoko repeats blankly. "You mean here? on this barge?"

"Wherever. Aoko, I—' the fingers, long fingers, magician's fingers, tighten around hers, "I don't have much to offer you. Because of KID, I never stay long in one place, both to avoid drawing suspicion and to target new gems…. we wouldn't have a home of our own, you wouldn't be able to see your family and friends very often, and we probably can't get married…. but if you're willing to cope with that, and, by any change, come live with me under these conditions, then please, Aoko, do so.

"There would be—compensations, I guess. I could show you around, introduce you to new people, enable you to live through occasions you've never dreamt of—or have dreamt of too much." His hand gestures vaguely in the general direction of where she knows is the Opera. "There are so many places where I thought, I wish Aoko could be here with me—we could be anything and everything, Aoko. Anyone we want. Please—" and his hands, which were waving in a search for the sun, for the moon, for the stars, lower again, gentle and thankful, to frame her face. "Please. I want to show you every corner of this world."

It would a new beginning, she thinks, leaning into the touch. A clean, fresh start, a start from scratch all over again—a way to be everything and everywhere one never could be before. A life with Kaito is bound to be exalting and adventurous and nothing short of wonderful, but—

But.

"So in other words," she says, slowly, "you're asking me to leave everything—to quit my job, my friends, my family, my life—to come here with you? to leave them behind, to hardly ever see them again­—to drop everything—to come into your life instead?"

He is silent one second; two. "Yes," he says, at long last, gravely. "That's exactly what I'm asking you." A taut smile twitches the corner of his lips. "I'm aware that of the selfish things I've inflicted on you, this one is probably the most so."

She nods. Her head is dipped, and she sees nothing of the clear river light, even though the sun is now risen and the Seine not so silent as it were. Tout-Va-Bien whimpers a little, asking to be pet. Somewhere upriver echoes the roar of a starting boat.

"Kaito. Kaito, I—"

"Hey." Fingers tangle with her hair so soft it might be just a passing windfall. "You don't have to give me a definite answer right now. We have all the time in the world—tell you what." (And these is something faintly excited in his voice, so reminiscent of when back in high school he would pull off a prank of the whole class that she lifts her eyes to him, hands twining with his like autumn leaves.) "You still have two weeks left of your leave from Japan, don't you?"

She doesn't ask how he knows that. "Yes… but—"

"Then spend them with me."

She blinks.

"Spend them with me," he repeats, sounding fond and vaguely amused. "We'll live on this barge—or if we get tired of it I've got a little place in high Montmartre we can go to. Just the two of us—well, three of us," he admits, laughing, as Tout-Va-Bien lodges his had on her lap and his hind legs on his, "as a couple. I'll show you around. There are so many places I want you to see—

"And then," he adds, more gentle now, as though feeling with soft-touched hands what he thought was fragile glass and discovering it touches back, "then tell me your answer. When you know. When you're really sure."

She looks at him, and despite last night it is only now that she fully sees her childhood friend, and everything that this realization implies, in the man sitting across from her. It is only now that the reality of KID, of Paul Sernine, really registers in, and all is calm.

(how much more selfish can we get, she wonders)

—and she finds it doesn't matter.

"Okay," she says, and is immediately overwhelmed by his eyes and hands and lips, and Tout-Va-Bien, a bit confused, tries to squeeze in between them, growling a little for his own share of attention, until a wolf-whistle manages to separate them. (It comes from a passing barge.)

"C'est la saison des amours, les tourteraux?" a man exclaims, splashing water everywhere.

'Va te faire foutre," Kaito replies, albeit amiably, and the sailor roars with laughter and prattles away downriver to whatever destination he's leaning toward. Tout-Va-Bien barks down the péniche after him.

"Friend of yours?" Aoko asks, her back against the parquet.

"You get to know the strangest people on the river," Kaito says, and that somehow makes her throat feel a little stuck (how long has he been waiting here for me?); but the sun has risen high and fair, and the water-sounds are soft and low, and when he kisses again it is with all the distinct fine of youth and laughter.

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(but it's a beautiful lie at that.)

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C'est la saison des amours, les tourteraux?—Love's come around for you, lovebirds?

Va te faire foutre—fuck off.

*sips tea* *has stolen the habit from gemi-chan*